


maybe it's a lost cause to stare at stars that aren't there

by amessofgaywords



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, a deep emotional dive into how kara danvers feels things, it's the day krypton was destroyed and kara misses it, it's time for some angst boys, lena is very philosophical about these things, she also knows that kara is supergirl because she's a genius, they're both very sad, this whole thing is very sad, why does ao3 keep reordering my tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 20:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amessofgaywords/pseuds/amessofgaywords
Summary: Only she truly knows the moment when it happens. Clark was too young and no one else is left, so it’s only her who gets to bear the burden when the clock turns over. Who gets to remember the moment when the fate of a world was pressed to her shoulders.It’s heavy, the weight of the world. Today, she bears it with strength she does not feel.or it's the anniversary of krypton's destruction and lena understands exactly how kara feels.





	maybe it's a lost cause to stare at stars that aren't there

**Author's Note:**

> i gotta be honest, i took a very intense interest in the theories presented in this fic, enough so that it took me three hours to finish because i kept stopping to write thesis-length diatribes about trust and home and heroism and the human (or alien) condition. and now that you've all called me a nerd... please, enjoy.
> 
> title from things the dove can hold inside its beak (girl, one) by continental drift on bandcamp. please, show this song and album some love; they're amazing.

Whenever anyone asks, Kara likes to say that her first home was beautiful.  
  
It’s just honest enough without exposing every one of her secrets, and she’s able to pretend that she means Midvale, or some other place firmly on this Earth, without much trouble.  
  
She got lucky, she knows. People don’t ask where she came from often, probably because Kara has spent most of her adult life crafting the perfect all-American girl persona. She played rec league soccer, was on honor roll with a just-above-average GPA, went to a respectable college, and has the whole well mannered, blonde-haired, blue-eyed thing down pretty well.  
  
The truth is that Kara Danvers was made to blend in, a harmonic girl crafted to fit every stereotype just right.  
  
She remembers watching movies, listening to Alex talk about beauty and expectations and hearing the ever ominous “that’s just the way the world works, Kara.” She remembers the way Clark looked when she asked him if he spoke Kryptonian, like it was an offense to be educated in such a language.  
  
Kara remembers burying some parts of her deep down inside, so far down that no one could find them. She remembers the lies and the stories and the establishment of the new identity, and she tries to pretend it doesn’t hurt.  
  
Kara Zor-El was sent to Earth as the last daughter of Rao, the final protector of a culture going up in flames. She was supposed to keep Rao’s light alive, let him shine another day.  
  
Instead, she squandered his cardinal rays into the deepest parts of her heart and put on a pair of glasses, even though it was not what Kara Zor-El had been meant to do.  
  
Because Kara Zor-El did not blend in. She shone like Rao himself.  
  
She was a born scholar, destined to be one of the youngest members of the Science Guild in her planet’s history. Her mother was a successful Council member with a reputation for being stern but kind, fair and just. Her father was focused and intelligent, but always playful with her and her cousins, never unwilling to unwind after a long day of work with a few games.  
  
Kara Zor-El lived in a large house, with open windows, since there was no rain under a red sun. Kara Zor-El grew up in elegant living rooms draped in ruby and sapphire, and matured under ceilings painted with constellations one could see from the Argo City Observatory. This is what Kara thinks of when she calls her home beautiful, because that is what it was: like the beaches of Brazil and the terraced homes of Greece and the elaborate gardens of France all at once, yet it compared to nothing on Earth.  
  
Kara Zor-El had friends. Many of them, even as a child. It wasn’t her parent’s status which granted her popularity, or even her kind, gentle nature. It was that she treated each and every person she talked to as if they were important, as if they meant something to her. People wanted to be around her, because to be even looked at by Kara Zor-El meant that there was someone out there who cared for you, who would hug you on your worst days and laugh with you on your best. Kara Zor-El was a ray of red sunshine, outshining the brilliant scarlet star.  
  
Indeed, Kara Zor-El was loved, and safe, and happy, with a bright present, and an even brighter future.  
  
But then that red sunshine melted into sparking fire, and everything Kara Zor-El knew burned.  
  
Later, she would relate the fall of her great planet to that of Icarus. Krypton was a superior race, but they let their arrogance precede them, and their wax wings dripped into ash as they plummeted back towards the ground, disgraced and ruined, their commendable work for naught.  
  
Sometimes, Kara wonders if they did the right thing in sending her away, for is this the way her people wished to be remembered? As pompous fools who stood about and did nothing as the world around them burned?  
  
Surely not, yet here she was.  
  
They sent her to be a beacon, a delegate. To represent the Kryptonian people, to let their legacy live on.  
  
These are the times when Kara _knows _that they did the wrong thing. She knows when she watches Clark stumble his way through a foreign language he has only heard spoken through droids. She knows when another civilian dies in an attack she could have prevented, if only she had been smart enough, fast enough, _strong enough. _____  
  
Most of the time, Kara knows her strength. She is aware of who she is, the power she holds, and the good she does.  
  
But one day every sun cycle, on the exact day when Krypton fell, Kara feels like she is worth nothing.  
  
No one has ever really seen her like this, she laments on the roof. The day is overcast, the clouds grimy and the sky smoggy. On patrol earlier, her cape had cut through vapor after vapor, the gray swirls twining around her torpedoing body.  
  
She wonders if this is what it looked like from the outside, the smoke. Or was it red, like the light of Rao? Like the blood of a dying city, spilling from the inside out?  
  
The DEO called her in twice, and Snapper had e-mailed her for a solid hour, but she can’t bring herself to answer. Not today.  
  
And now, as the last light fades, she simultaneously dreads and rejoices in the end of the pain. It is hers alone to bear, and she knows it’s selfish, but she wants it to be gone.  
  
Only she truly knows the moment when it happens. Clark was too young and no one else is left, so it’s only her who gets to bear the burden when the clock turns over. Who gets to remember the moment when the fate of a world was pressed to her shoulders.  
  
It’s heavy, the weight of the world. Today, she bears it with strength she does not feel.  
  
It’s silent on the roof. The dull of it all, the cold air on her skin, the gentle rhythm of her hands, clenching and unclenching the stone underneath them, all of it reminds her of months in space, alone, unfeeling, asleep but afraid.  
  
“I thought it was you up here.” The voice is low, soft, just quiet enough for Kara to pick it up without being scared.  
  
Indeed, the lazy swirl of Kara’s consciousness is tugged back into reality by Lena Luthor slumping unceremoniously, ungracefully beside her in sweatpants and an old college shirt. At Kara’s bewildered look, she chuckles.  
  
“You realize you’re on the roof of my building, right?” Lena sighed. “Imagine my surprise when security called to tell me Supergirl was enigmatically brooding above my penthouse.”  
  
“Sorry,” Kara chokes out after a long moment. Her voice is scratchy from disuse, the effort of speaking too much. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.”  
  
Lena shrugs. “Nah, no, you’re fine. I wasn’t working or anything,” she says, bites her lip, and they’re silent for a moment. Strands of Lena’s unbound hair brush Kara’s cheeks when a wind sweeps by, and she smells like machine oil and cinnamon sugar. “So, what brings National City’s golden girl to the rooftop of Lena Luthor to mope?”  
  
Kara shrugs, chews on her tongue, picks at the cement under her fingers. “Bad day. Memories.” (Vague answers. An art she’s perfected, one she wishes she weren’t so good at.)  
  
They’re silent for a moment.  
  
“Was Krypton’s day cycle much different from ours?” Lena asks, finally. She isn’t judgmental, simply curious, and Kara is grateful.  
  
“Not much,” she answers simply. “Our months were longer, and divided differently. And our days were slightly shorter.”  
  
Lena nods patiently, and doesn’t say anything else.  
  
“April eighteenth.” She says, firm voice breaking the stillness, and Kara turns to look at her.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“It’s the day Lex blew up Metropolis, tried to kill Superman.” Lena takes a deep, shattering breath, sniffs. “Lillian called at 11:03 in the morning with the news.” Lena ducks her head, and she clears her throat before saying, all in a rush, voice high and vulnerable, and Kara knows she’s never told anyone this before. “My brother showed me love when there was no one left to care about me. So maybe I don’t know what it’s like to lose my whole planet, but I sure as hell know what it’s like to lose my whole world.”  
  
Silence and the wind. A car alarm goes off in an alley below.  
  
Kara moves her hand, just an inch. Lena meets her halfway.  
  
Neither looks down as their pinkies intertwine.  
  
Kara doesn’t stop to think it’s something Lena’s only ever done with Kara Danvers, not Supergirl, that there’s some unseen barrier she’s crossing right now. She thinks all those barriers dissolved a long time ago.  
  
“Krypton was my first home,” Kara tells Lena, voice cracking. The pinkie around hers squeezes tighter, but she barely feels the pressure. She’s never wanted invulnerability less.  
  
“Krypton was my first home and it was beautiful.” There’s a pregnant pause. “But it was also rotten and terrible sometimes, and it fell because they let it fall.”  
  
“That’s the rub, isn’t it?” Lena says drily. “Our heroes are never as perfect as we want them to be, because if they were, they wouldn’t be our heroes.”  
  
Kara looks at her. “Do you really believe that?”  
  
Lena shrugs. “I believe that everyone is flawed. And sooner or later, we’re all bound to let someone down.” Kara looks back to the clouds. They’re opening a bit; sunlight turned to moonlight is creeping through. “But I also believe that we can’t love someone without their flaws. We need to see all of them to know who they are, to trust them fully with our hearts.”  
  
“Did you trust Lex?” Kara asks, hopes it doesn’t offend.  
  
Lena sucks in a breath. “I did. But I don’t think he trusted anyone, not even me. And that… it has to go both ways, you know, the trust? To work. And it never did, not for him.” She’s quiet for a long second, and when she speaks again, her voice is softer. “I don’t think he was anyone’s hero. Anyone’s but mine.”  
  
Kara looks at the woman beside her, raw and empty. It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror: the image is distorted, but it’s the same heart, same soul, same fears and passions and secrets. “It’s okay to miss him, you know.”  
  
Lena smirks, the hurt in her eyes ever present but masked behind a mischievous glint. “It’s okay to miss them, you know,” she parrots, fixing Kara with a glance. Kara looks away, and suddenly, Lena’s cold hand is enveloping hers entirely. Her thin fingers wind around Kara’s, and she gives the lightest of squeezes, and says, “you don’t have to be strong all the time, Supergirl. Even heroes have to be sad sometimes.”  
  
Kara ponders that, weighs Lena’s words, tries to find the deeper meaning in them. “You think I’m a hero?”  
  
Lena plays with Kara’s warm fingers, not quite meeting her eyes. “I think you’re a lot of things to a lot of people.”  
  
Kara tugs gently on her hand, makes Lena look at her. “And to you?”  
  
A flicker of a smile crosses her face. “I meant what I said.” She takes a breath and looks out to the sky. “You, Kara Danvers, are my hero.”  
  
And there it is. Out in the open, no denying it.  
  
Kara finds she doesn’t want to.  
  
“Yeah, it’s Zor-El, actually.”  
  
Lena smiles, her eyes crinkling just a little. “Kara Zor-El.”  
  
The words sound like red sunlight and lazy evenings and her first home.  
  
But the way Lena says them also makes them feel like her second.  
  
Kara lifts her hand from Lena’s and swings it around Lena’s shoulder. The early moonlight makes her face look soft, young, like something in a monochromatic short film. She’s tired and broken, and Kara knows exactly how she feels.  
  
“You’re my hero, too, you know.”  
  
Lena chuckles, shakes her head. “I don’t know how you could believe that. All I do is let people down.”  
  
Kara cocks her head, looks down at Lena, huddled and cold under her cape, small and sad and dark and beautiful. “But that’s what heroes do. You said so yourself.” She rubs a soothing thumb into Lena’s arm, and Lena melts into her embrace. “I believe in you because of your failings, not in spite of them. They make you better, Lena.”  
  
Lena turns her head, and Kara feels wet tears paint the inside of her arm. She simply pulls the woman closer, squeezes her tighter. Kara was right; she is broken. A thousand scattered pieces that everyone else picked up and put back together wrong, simply because they didn’t care. If anyone needs a hero, it’s Lena.  
  
“What would I have done if they hadn’t sent your perfect ass to Earth, huh?” Lena jokes sadly, her laugh a wet, pitiful thing. “Probably dropped myself off the Metropolis bridge.”  
  
Kara turns slightly, lifts Lena’s chin, drowns herself in those emerald eyes. “You would have triumphed. With or without me, Lex, or anyone. You, Lena Kieran Luthor, are a hero enough on your own, do you hear me?”  
  
Lena’s eyes are hooded and stormy and searching.  
  
And then she leans forward and presses her lips to Kara’s and _oh_.  
  
So this is what Rao’s light feels like.  
  
Just like that, Kara’s standing on molten sand, red shining through her hair, blue and white robes painted in swaths of vermilion and carmine and colors she can’t even name on Earth. She hears the sounds of Krypton around her, feels the sensations of what was once her happiest place.  
  
But this time Lena smiles up at her, cherry on her cheeks and eyes glowing in the sunset. Her hair swirls in a mass about her head, blown by the gentle wind, and she wears El family robes.  
  
And just like that, Krypton fades, and Kara knows at once, _feels, _in her heart, that her first home is gone.__  
  
But that’s okay, because Lena is her second.  
  
Kissing Lena feels like fireworks, like the fizzy berries she used to eat with her friends on Krypton that dissolved in their bellies, like the first time she ate pop rocks with Alex or tried alien alcohol.  
  
Kissing Lena is hot and cold, bright and dark. Lena’s hands in her hair feel like tethers and broken chains all at once, holding her down and splitting her loose. Kissing Lena Luthor is one paradox after another, and Kara can’t get enough.  
  
Lena’s body pressed against hers feels like every dream she’s ever had. Lena’s eyelashes brushing her cheek is sweet enough to make her blush. Lena’s tongue in her mouth tastes like sugar and sweet alien fruits and she’s _soft, _so soft, and vulnerable, and Kara feels the light of Rao bless her through her pain.__  
  
And all too soon, Lena is pulling away. “Is that okay?” She asks, and she’s blushing, and her cheeks are cold, but she’s smiling, really, truly smiling, and Kara pulls her closer again.  
  
“You are extraordinary.”  
  
Lena kisses her hard.  
  
And Kara Zor-El’s world ended thirteen years ago today, and everything she thought she knew went up in smoke, and her heroes’ pedestals buckled underneath them, but all of it is okay, because Lena’s lips feel like coming home, and Kara swears when their lips meet again the moon shines a little redder through the clouds.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me @amessofgaywords on twitter if you like.


End file.
